


L is for Longitude

by Prosodi



Category: Hornblower - C. S. Forester
Genre: M/M, Sexual Content, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-01
Updated: 2012-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-30 10:48:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/330909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prosodi/pseuds/Prosodi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of positions - how Bush relates to Hornblower, and how they navigate one another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	L is for Longitude

Largely, he is far more comfortable with instinct.

 

i.  
From a distance they are immediately recognizable as naval officers. Part of it lies in the uniform, the severe angle of their Lieutenant hats, but also in the way they walk. After months at sea, both Bush and Hornblower weave through the narrow streets with something of a roll to their steps: a bob and weave in the span of their shoulders that demands a certain set of expectations that the ground simply can’t meet. The pair tromp along, ungainly, until at long last they reach their destination.

  
“Ha!” Bush cries, a grin spreading across his face. The tavern looks about as respectable as they require and it’s a welcome sight in an unfamiliar port. Still, they haven’t wasted too much of their precious time working through the tangle of people and streets. Bush is rarely lost.

He looks briefly back at Hornblower to share his triumph. The younger man is pale under his tan - like the land doesn‘t quite agree with him -, and his dark eyes bright. Hornblower’s mouth continues to school itself into an unpleasantly composed line.

Later, Bush’s hands blindly find every button on the girl’s dress as he kisses where the line of her jaw meets her ear. She smells like fruit, although maybe it’s just the lack of salt in her soft skin. He is somewhat preoccupied with the taste, so for a second he is surprised when his fingers meet the dry skin on the back of Hornblower’s hands.

Never mind the darkness, lamps long turned low - Bush has no trouble finding his eyes over the line of the bare white shoulder between them. Hornblower looks down at his own fingers on the whore’s back. Or maybe at the hard lines of Bush’s rough knuckles. A cable of tension as Hornblower’s hands still. Bush’s too. The younger man looks for the places where his fingers belong and Bush has no intention of guiding him or the span of his long fingers.

Soon Hornblower will make the perfect landfall.

 

ii.  
It’s hard to get the words out. They stick in his throat. Twenty-four-pounders with soaked wadding and no powder. He chases after what he means to say, finally managing: “Brown, where are we?”

A lag, startled. It’s hard to see inside the carriage and Bush can’t make out more than the general shape of the man‘s head and shoulders. Then, “Sir, beggin’ your pardon. There’s mostly snow, sir.”

Bush tilts his head to the side. It feels like moving the world. Hornblower looks out of the carriage’s window and the light that harshly lines the curve of his jaw and nose is the only thing that breaks up the oppressive darkness. After a while Bush closes his eyes. It doesn’t make much of a difference.

 

iii.  
Hornblower reads like a voyage before the chronometer: all educated guesswork and undecipherable steps of instinct. It is having a general knowledge of where he's going but a certain lack of precision that Bush is strangely comfortable with (because Bush knows the sea and the Southern Cross, the stars that can give him his position by means of relativity, but it is in the exactness of mathematics that he doesn’t quite grasp where to place his fingers). Sine, cosine and the angles of Hornblower’s hands and wrists, the longitude of his back.

So Bush waits until Hornblower offers his hand before taking it. His grip is firm and steady. Bush is long practiced in the art of waiting, the precise strength of grip required to keep anything which has been given him: “Don’t you go worrying about us, sir.”

“I won’t worry with you in command, Bush.”

There is no losing that, true as the needle of a compass. No guesswork in finding North. So when the longboat shoves off Bush has no desire to look back as Hornblower becomes steadily smaller, as the darkness swallows him until only the lights of La Havre are left to guide them home.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written some time ago for ageofsail's alphabet soup.


End file.
